Writing, and humble photography.

Belligerent Q&A, Vol X: Novelist and short story writer John McManus

John McManus is reading in this photograph. Courtesy photo.

Norfolk, Va., novelist, short story writer, educator, and columnist John McManus visited France earlier this summer, dealing a crushing defeat to my dreams of getting this Belligerent Q&A posted in June 2011.

In America, we don’t look backwards, even if it’s only a month or so. We can’t get within 1,000 meters of a month or so, I think, because we don’t use the metric system. Or, say, go back to 1799, when France adopted it. Philosopher Concorcet once said: “The metric system is for all people for all time.” A prediction that was only off by an inch or so.

Let me note I was surprised to learn practicing one’s chosen art in the French countryside is more enjoyable than answering a series of foolish questions emailed by one’s student (well after the semester ends, granted ) for said student’s blog.

C’est très choquant!

And that’s right — McManus is one of my professors in the Old Dominion University MFA Creative Writing Program.

This is necessary full disclosure, but if you read this blog regularly (1) you are my Mom, suddenly computer literate, and (2) you already know I have more conflicts with these interviews than the Catholics had with the Huguenots from 1562 through 1598.

Zinged you there, France. (The Google translate function is giving nothing French for “zing.”)

Point being, McManus is the author of a novel, Bitter Milk, and the short story collections Born on a Train and Stop Breakin Down, and he earned the Whiting Writers’ Award in 2000.

And, look, I don’t want to overhype this, but this Belligerent Q&A is for all people for all time.

Et maintenant sur avec spectacle …

Q: Just who do you think you are? Please use three examples in your response.

This question has stymied me for weeks. My three examples of not knowing who I think I am: (1) the weeks I’ve spent unable to answer it, (2) Being and Nothingness, (3) my responses below.

Q: You are an award-winning fiction writer, an educator, a world traveler, and an AltDaily columnist. Do you consider yourself the less self-referential James Franco of Hampton Roads?

Scanning down to this second question before answering the first would have taught me who I am, although I would argue that a difference between Franco and me is that he wants to obtain a PhD whereas I do not.

Q: Your storied appreciation for the work of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has popularized a nickname, “Cooch.” I often dream that you and the attorney general will star in a by-the-numbers buddy cop show/procedural on CBS. What would your nickname be and why? What crimes would you like to tackle?

If, after my writing partner and I produce our forthcoming musical about Ken Cuccinelli, the attorney general remains willing to star with me in a buddy show, I’ll deem our musical to have failed. Let’s refashion the cop show in the iconoclastic-loner vein of cop dramas a la Dexter, although I’ve never watched Dexter and so could be wrong to assume that’s what he is. My character would be a forensic expert in an ancient Rome where forensic analysis is as advanced as ours albeit with mechanical equipment. The show would be filmed on location so I would move to Italy. Nickname: Rullus. As I contemplate this, I realize how much I’d like for Cuccinelli to play a character who worships pagan gods of antiquity, so I retract my earlier answer. There’s a role for him as a leery, superstitious coroner who spends his off-hours in the city’s many temples, making offerings to god after god.

Q: When two vowels go walking, which one does the talking?

Earlier I was listening to The National’s album Boxer and remembering how for years the LP was tainted in my mind by my belief that Matt Berninger was singing ‘your mind is racing like a pronoun’ rather than the real lyric, ‘racing like a pro now.’ That misheard lyric irritated me so much that I listened rather apprehensively to their 2010 album High Violet, waiting for similarly irksome lyrics. If I were to answer this question, someone might read my response and think thoughts about me that are similar to ones I thought unfairly about Berninger.

Q: When you take over for retiring U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, what will be your first three agenda items?

Taking down the gigantic pictures of Pat Robertson at the Norfolk Airport.

Taking down the ‘No Right Turn’ sign on southbound Llewellyn Avenue at the approach to Delaware Avenue. (Was there ever a more absurd ‘No Right Turn’ sign?)

Abolishing the electoral college.

Q: Why won’t The New Yorker publish my PBS NewsHour fan fiction?

When The New Yorker rejects a story of mine, I resubmit it as work of a different genre (e.g. dance critique, slice-of-life sketch, cartoon) and sign the cover letter ‘Malcolm Gladwell.’

Q: You are co-directing the Old Dominion University literary festival this year. How many days will be dedicated to Tami Hoag’s thriller Night Sins? And what else can we expect?

With apologies to Orson Welles’s 1970s-era Carlsberg beer ads, the ODU literary festival is probably the best literary festival in the world. Tami Hoag isn’t on this year’s schedule, but as you know I co-direct the festival with Michael Pearson and so I don’t have autonomy over these matters.

Q: If I make it through the ODU program and earn an MFA, will you and your fellow professors Janet Peery and Sheri Reynolds take me to one of those old-timey photograph places on the Virginia Beach strip? What costumes should we wear? Then can we go to Dippin’ Dots afterwards, please?

Yes. Shackleton and other Endurance crew members. Let’s play it by ear.

Q: France, huh?

In May I was in residence at the Dora Maar House in Menerbes, France, a hilltop village in the Luberon Valley about halfway between Avignon and Aix-en-Provence. The only non-wonderful part of this fellowship was having to leave at the end.

Q: By the time you come back, there may be a Chipotle in Ghent. Will you be extending your trip?

This question reveals how pathetically long it’s taken me to answer your questions.

Q: We’ve covered so much ground here. What else would you like to say?

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than that I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.